away from the sun
by memorysdaughter
Summary: Patterson goes missing. Jane can't stop until they find her.
**A/N:** Based on the promo pictures for 1x17. The first three lines come from gypsyscarfwoman on Tumblr.

I'm memorysdaughter over on Tumblr, earthquakedgirl on Twitter, and earthquakegirl on AO3. Come hang with me - I'm awesome, I swear.

Thanks to everyone who reads/reviews/favorites/follows/sends me messages. I enjoy getting feedback and hearing what you think!

Enjoy!

* * *

 _How do you find the person who always finds you?_

Patterson had vanished two days ago. The security cameras showed her leaving her apartment building at 7am, but she'd vanished from the grid and never arrived at the NYO.

On the morning of the second day, when it became clear she hadn't just forgotten to call in sick, when her phone turned up in a locker at Central Station and an "anonymous" tip from a homeless guy led them to it, they started at her apartment. Her place was a mess; the dining room table was buried in a half-inch of papers and books. The wall behind the table was plastered with map fragments and photos and strange bits of writing.

"This looks like one of those serial killer walls from a bad crime show," Reade muttered as he looked at the mishmash of scraps.

"I don't know what that means," Jane said. She tapped one of pieces of paper – a rough photocopy of a crossword puzzle clue. "What do you think she was looking for?"

Reade shrugged. "I have no earthly clue. Patterson's brain… it doesn't work the way ours does. We could stand here for days and never know what she was thinking about."

Jane took pictures of the entire thing, nevertheless, and noted the titles of the books on the table ( _Decoding Crosswords_ ; Shiveley's _Encoded Messages Through The Ages_ ; _Crossword Clues A-L_ ; and, oddly enough, _The Customs and Traditions of Canadian Jews_ ). She was well aware that everything meant something to Patterson, and if they were going to find her, find their brilliant blonde scientist whose mind worked like a finely-honed machine, they would need every single clue possible.

It was clear Weller didn't believe Jane's theory. "None of this means anything."

"It has to," Jane said.

She couldn't explain it, at least not in the way she wanted to, but she knew she was right. And when Weller and Reade went to look through the surveillance tapes at Central Station in hopes of seeing the person who had left Patterson's phone, Jane got Zapata to teach her how to use the photocopier. She printed off the photos of Patterson's "serial killer wall," enlarged them to actual size, and taped them up on a blank wall in an empty conference room. Once that was done, Jane stood back, tilted her head, and stared at the clues.

 _They're all right in front of me. I just have to put them together. I just have to… think like she does._

"Okay, Patterson," Jane murmured. "Show me what I'm looking for."

* * *

She was cold. Her head hurt, throbbed with pain. Her mouth tasted like metal. Her thoughts were cloudy. There was something she was supposed to do, something she was supposed to be looking for, something she needed to finish.

But her head hurt. It was getting dark. Her lips were cracked and she was so thirsty.

 _Maybe in a few minutes. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe…_

* * *

At three in the morning Jane burst into the conference room. "I figured it out!"

Zapata raised her head from the tabletop. Next to her, Weller jerked upright in his chair. Reade merely rolled his head to one side and let out a soft snore.

"Figured what out?" Mayfair asked. She was the only one who hadn't fallen asleep.

Jane triumphantly thrust one of the crossword clues towards the older woman. "Eight letters – word for old things, sometimes offered at a flea market."

Mayfair looked confused. Zapata said, "Antiques."

"Antiques!" Jane agreed.

Mayfair and Zapata exchanged a glance. "You worked for six hours and you only figured that out?"

It deflated Jane only slightly. "It's… more than you guys did," she muttered, hoping they couldn't hear the bitterness in her tone.

"Jane," Mayfair said gently, "the tech team is working on Patterson's phone. I'm sure they'll have a lead for us in the morning. Why don't you get some sleep?"

Jane held up the map fragments. "There are twelve antiques shops in the vicinity of these two map locations. Add that to the other clues… and this is the only one that makes sense."

"You want us to search twelve antiques shops?" Zapata asked tiredly. "What if she's not there?"

"We have to do _something_ ," Jane said.

"We are," Mayfair said. "Jane, get some rest."

 _I won't rest until we find her_. Jane wanted to say it. It was in her mouth and on her tongue, but a though occurred to her. "Okay. I will," she said, and the moment she was out of the room, she bolted back to the wall.

* * *

 _I don't remember why I came out here._

 _I'm hungry._

 _I'm cold._

 _My leg hurts._

 _I think I might throw up._

 _Are they… are they coming for me?_

 _I hope they get here soon._

* * *

"It's a substitution cipher!"

Once again the rest of the team turned towards Jane. At just past eight in the morning, they looked a little more chipper. Coffee had been distributed and there was a cardboard box of pastries in the middle of the table.

"Did you sleep?" Weller asked concernedly.

Jane shook her head. "No."

"Jane."

" _Listen_ ," Jane said. "I went through all of the names of the antique stores trying to connect them to Patterson's clues."

"Clues? Jane, for all we know she's just really into crosswords this week," Reade said. "You know Patterson, she's…"

Words hesitated in the air – _eccentric. Brainy. Weird. Out-there. Emotionally damaged after the bizarre murder of her boyfriend, and remember how that was sort of all your fault?_

Jane shook her head. "Then I found this."

She passed one of the clues across the table. "At first I thought it was nothing, but then I remembered Patterson talking about substitution ciphers, and how everything means something…"

Weller looked down at the string of seemingly meaningless letters jumbled together. "You think this is a cipher?"

Jane nodded.

"Let's get it to forensics, see if they can figure it out, and we'll…"

"You don't have to do that," Jane said, and she couldn't stop herself from grinning. "I already solved it."

At that everyone looked up at her.

Jane shrugged. "I didn't want to wait for a lead. So I found one myself."

* * *

"Help!" Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. Her throat hurt. Her leg was numb, which would have been fine except for the fact that it had been painful only a few hours – _days?_ – before.

"Help!" She was so goddamn thirsty. She'd tried eating the snow around her, but it hadn't made her any less thirsty.

Her vision was blurry and her stomach rolled with nausea. She'd thrown up at least once – things were getting foggy – and now her breathing came in slow, sloppy gasps. "Help!"

And she hadn't found him. Hadn't even gotten close.

Or had she?

It was getting hard to remember.

Were they coming?

That was getting hard to remember, too.

* * *

As the team walked into Fleischmann's Antiques, Jane's fingers went to the piece of paper in her pocket. In Patterson's handwriting it read GYYN GY UN ZFYCMWBGUHH'M UHNCKOYM CZ SIO QUHN NI MYY XUPCX UAUCH. And now, underneath, in Jane's printing, the real message: _Meet me at Fleischmann's Antiques if you want to see David again._

It was a small shop, cramped and dusty, dangerously attempting to bridge the territory between "eccentric vintage stuff" and "junk crammed in a storage locker." A small white-haired man bobbed behind the front counter, gigantic magnifying glasses making his eyes seem wobbly and anime-large. "I have not seen anyone like that," he said as Weller held up a photo of Patterson. "Young, pretty girls – they do not come in here, huh?"

"Is there anyone else who works here who we could speak to?" Weller asked. "She would have come through here about three days ago."

The old man thought about this. "Perhaps my nephew. He was here to cover for me in the afternoon. I will ask."

Jane's fingers buzzed with something she couldn't define. Her eyes roamed over knickknacks and statuettes, seeking meaning. Seeking something that would have captured Patterson's interest. Nothing around her stood out.

The old man returned with a lanky, shifty-eyed younger man he introduced as his nephew. "This is my nephew, Pavel," he said. "He will be more than happy to answer your questions."

Pavel seemed like he'd be anything but happy to be questioned by the FBI. Weller didn't hesitate, though; he stepped forward with the picture.

Jane turned and went down an aisle full of jewelry and cosmetic items.

"… she stopped for directions. Said she was going hiking, and…"

Her fingers brushed a small ceramic dish containing a few odd trinkets – a watch, three rings, and two thin gold necklaces. The dish was an interesting color, but otherwise…

Jane froze. Her head went up and she caught Zapata's eye. In a split second the other agent was next to her. "What is it?"

"It's… they're…" Jane couldn't get her hand to leave the dish of jewelry. Shaking, she held it out to Zapata. "This… it's…"

Zapata took one look and her face became steely with resolve. "She was here."

* * *

"Help," she wheezed. Her mouth tasted sour. Snowflakes drifted down from the sky, and she tried to catch them on her cracked tongue. "Please. I'm so sorry."

Someone walked towards her; her blurry eyes couldn't focus well enough to track them. They got closer, and she felt her mouth try to smile. "David," she breathed.

A hand came down and stroked her head.

"I found you," she managed to get out.

Without speaking a word, he smiled at her, sadly, and disappeared into the haze just beyond her visual field. She wanted to cry, but she was all out of tears.

He hadn't even told her if they were coming to get her.

* * *

"Fan out," Weller ordered them tersely. "We'll find her."

Jane made sure her weapon was at the ready, then tucked her hand into her pocket once more. Now, in addition to the Caesar cipher, she had Patterson's jewelry. The weight was somehow comforting.

It was snowing heavily as they made their way out into the forest behind the shop. Jane scanned the path, looking for any hint of Patterson. Her heart was pounding – they only had so much time before the snow made the area unrecognizable and all clues would be gone.

 _We'll find her_.

Five hundred feet down the path Jane spotted a scrap of fabric trailing from a sharp twig. Upon closer inspection she recognized the pattern: it was from the shirt Patterson wore the day she'd disappeared.

She radioed in the find and kept moving. A few hundred feet beyond that Jane knelt, seeing the signs of something – or someone – being dragged through the underbrush. She followed the sloppy trail down a slope, stumbling on the loose dirt underfoot, and nearly went headfirst over a cliff at the base of the hill. As she regained her balance she heard a small, strange noise.

Jane turned her head away from the wind and listened.

It came again – a twisted, pained moan.

From the base of the cliff.

Jane looked down. The late afternoon gloom was making it difficult for her to see anything. She grabbed her flashlight and peered over the cliff. At first she didn't see anything, but as she swept the beam back and forth, she caught sight of a huddled mass of brown and white and blond…

"Patterson," Jane breathed, and she scrambled over the cliff.

* * *

She opened her eyes when the light hit them. Her legs were no longer attached to her body; they'd gone so numb that she could no longer feel anything from the waist down. Her mouth was cracked and dry and her thoughts floated in her head like gluey globs of black tar.

A face. There was someone coming towards her.

"David," she breathed.

She tried to reach up for him, she really did, but her body just didn't react.

He wrapped a jacket around her and tipped water into her mouth, though, and she wasn't about to protest.

* * *

They took over Patterson's hospital room. She drifted in and out of consciousness, so there was no way she'd know whether or not they were there, but in an unspoken agreement they all decided they weren't leaving her alone. Their beloved scientist had an open fracture of her left leg, a concussion, two broken ribs, a bevy of scrapes, cuts, and bruises, and suffered from severe dehydration. Though the doctors only said it once, to Weller and Mayfair, the rest of the team knew how dire the situation was - Patterson had been four hours or so away from lapsing into a coma, the outcome of which would not have been positive.

Jane was awake when Patterson came around. The young woman's eyes focused a bit hazily on Jane's face. "David," she managed to get out.

Jane froze.

Patterson's brow furrowed and she blinked. "No," she said slowly.

"Are you in pain?" Jane asked gently, leaning forward. She tentatively brushed a lock of hair away from Patterson's face.

"Thirsty," Patterson mumbled.

Jane poured a cup of water from the pitcher on the bedside table and guided it to Patterson's mouth. The blonde drank greedily and leaned back breathing heavily. "'M sorry," she said softly, her eyes lidded and heavy.

"For what?"

"Hmm," Patterson replied. "How'd… how'd you find me?"

"Followed your clues," Jane said. She shifted her weight on the chair to pull Patterson's note out of her pocket, showing it to the other woman.

Patterson's expression changed nearly immediately. "He wasn't there," she breathed, her eyes filling with tears. "He wasn't _there_."

Jane slipped her hand into Patterson's and squeezed. "No, he wasn't," she said carefully, unsure of the correct response to such a statement.

Patterson bowed her head and sobbed, clinging to Jane's hand. It was heartbreaking, even more so due to the fact that due to her dehydration, Patterson couldn't even produce tears.

At last the gulps and sobs slowed and Patterson looked over at Jane. "He wasn't there," she whispered again.

Jane started to speak.

"But you were," Patterson went on, and her grip on Jane's hand tightened. "You were there."

 _How do you find the person who always finds you?_

 _You do the same thing she does – don't stop looking._


End file.
